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Vue is a great tool and I've been using it a lot lately to organize my projects. I use it on Mac OS X 10.2 (at work) and 10.4 (at home). Here are a few user interface tweaks I would put on my Christmas list:

1. Allow user to set defaults (or at least persistent state) for color, line weight, etc. Every time I create a new node, it appears in that orange color, regardless of the color scheme I've been working with.

2. On the Mac, double-clicking a Vue map in the Finder will launch the application, but not open the map!

3. The text editing tool seems to lock you into a field, and will not let you click another field without first selecting another tool and then re-selecting the text editing tool.

Thanks again for creating a powerful tool. I'm across town at BC and would help out myself if I had any programming ability.

Re: 1 - the toolbar should keep some of your state, tho when it does is still rather confusing. If it's not doing it at all then it's broke and we'll be fixing it. We're also going to be adding remebering some custom colors you may have created in the color menu.

Re: 2 - This is a known bug, which currently appears to be a problem in Mac Java. We haven't found a workaroun yet.

I have a request for further development. There needs to be a way to import information. Freemind is a good tool and I am using it now, I would switch to VUE but importing is important. I need to be able to at least take some text in a hierarchal view and copy using the clipboard into VUE.

I think that this has already been noted, but the way pictures are thumbnailed in the node is not satisfactory: the thumbnail size can not be changed and there is no anti-aliasing. It can be especially important when one wants to add some equations in the map.

Everything else works just fine. Thanks for creating a powerful and useful tool.

The current image support is definitely very limited -- we're working on major improvements here. When you say no anti-aliasing, you mean on the reduced image? We should be able to improve this some -- right now all of our image scaling is optimized for speed, not quality, tho I don't know if we can improve it enough for your needs -- any chance you could post an example image we could use for testing this? tnc, Scott

As for the image scaling, I believe that it can be done just once (actually every time the zoom or thumbnail size is changed). But the fact that you zoom in on small nodes make it more difficult (you will need to store one additional thumbnail).

As for me, I will be totally satisfied with the possibility to place images "as is" retaining the original size. I think that this is the most important feature to me.

I see what you mean with your example image -- not readable unless you zoom way in on the map. We always keep the full size image cached -- right now they're just forced down to a small fixed size when we draw the map. In the next version we're giving you options for what to do with images, and one of them could be to leave images at the "natural" size (in addition to the ability to re-scale them as you wish).

BTW, I don't know if this will help you, but VUE has full Unicode support, so you have the option of using the special Unicode math symbols in text strings, tho there are definitely more powerful tools for creating such strings/images, so you may want to stick with using the pre-created images.

Hi Bryce: In response to your feature requests I have news and a question.

Text wrapping in nodes: This is a scheduled feature (tracking number VUE-386). It is currently scheduled as a "stretch" feature in the mid-May public release. This is part of the feature to provide rich text formating in nodes.

Ability to link nodes between maps: Can you describe how you want this to work for your use case? Do you expect that a node on one map would be a read-only link to a node on another map? Would clicking on this node open the other map and put focus on the linked node? Would the maps reside on the same local file system?

and oh, I forgot these 3 language support (I know, this is boring) 4 export to html or some other online publishable format or a small java applet 5 more options on how to show content 5.1 resize pictures (already requested) 5.2 toggle show picture/link to file 5.3 ability to show text files content/link to file 5.4 ability to open linked VUE maps inside current map (maybe similar to Bryce Battisti request) 5.5 preview of http links (this is mean, I know its very difficult) 5.6 ability add a background color to a group of items (ie: cloud), if one item is part of more than one cloud, colors are merged 5.7 enhancement to 5.6, using gradients, patterns or images instead of just colors

Language support : I agree. Translation could be done by users based on a resource file with the english words. It works for many programs : it is a way to involve the community in the improvment of a software. But for that, usually, the software needs to be modified...